Have you read the recent Forbes OracleVoice blog titled Customer Loyalty is Dead. Long Live Engagement!? If you haven’t, take a look. This article prompted lots of conversation in the social realm. Many who read the article voiced their reactions to the headline and now I’m jumping in to add my view.

Customer loyalty is still key. It’s the effect and engagement is the cause. We at least know that to be true for our customers. We are in an age where customers are demanding to be heard. We need them to be actively involved – or engaged – as well. Greater levels of customer engagement, properly targeted, positively correlate with satisfaction. Our data has shown us this over and over. Satisfied customers are more loyal and more willing to vocalize their satisfaction through referencing, and are more likely to purchase again, all of which in turn drives incremental revenue – from the customer doing the referencing AND the customer on the receiving end of that reference.

Turning this around completely, if we begin to see the level of a customer’s engagement start to wane, this is an indicator that their satisfaction, loyalty, and future revenue are likely at risk. At Oracle, we’ve put in place many programs to target, encourage, and then track engagement, allowing us to measure engagement as a determinant of loyalty. Some of these programs include our Key Accounts, solution design and architectural, Executive Sponsorship, as well as executive advisory boards.

Specific programs allow us to engage specific contacts within specific customer organizations (based on role) and then systematically track their engagement activities over time, along side of tracking customer satisfaction, loyalty, referenceability, and incremental revenue contribution. Continuous measurement of engagement allows us to better understand customer views of what it means to partner with a provider and adjust program participation to better meet the needs of the partnership. We can also track across customer segments, and design new programs that are even more effective than the ones we have in place today.

In case you missed any of my previous Forbes articles, I’ve included links below for easy access.

• Award-Winning Companies Put Customers First
• The Power of Peer Networks: 5 Reasons to Get (and Stay) Involved
• Technology At Work: Traveling In Style
• Customer Central: 8 Strategies for Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business
• Technology at Work: Five Companies Doing IT Right